A social Campaign against hate speech: Gay in Poland?

by Anula, Aleksandra, and Anna

How do you create a campaign against hate speech directed towards LGBT people?

That was our question. …

So what’s our answer after 10 days of intensive planning and implementation?

There were about 100 discussions, 100 disagreements, 100 late night conversations, 1000 ideas, and more.

We started by focusing on the problem – what is the problem? Answer: Hate speech directed towards sexual minorities in Poland. Simple enough, right? Wrong… We dove deeper into the topic becoming more and more aware of the issues at hand. The amount of hateful comments we came across in public spaces, the Internet, and pretty much everywhere was unbelievable. Worst of all, people have become desensitized to such hate speech, ultimately decreasing safety not only for LGBT people but for society as well.

The next step was to create a social campaign, which, let’s put it out there: it’s not that easy. We had a lot of ideas but they were all missing something… After meeting with Creative Director Marek Dorobisz we realized we did not have a solid message –which is the core of a campaign. Our message was not detailed enough, much less did we have a target audience we wanted to reach. Director Dorobisz threw out ideas and we got to work.

Gay in Poland? This is the title of our social campaign against hate speech. Let us tell you our mission:

Gay in Poland? is a social campaign against hate speech committed to raising awareness of what it might mean to be gay in Poland (we use the term “gay” to encompass those who identify as LGBT people). For someone who is not part of the LGBT community, the typical image they have of gays is through the lens of Pride Parade and other major community events. We aim to illustrate the multi-faceted experiences of gays in Poland through these digital initiatives. Gay in Poland? believes in combating the injustices targeting individuals’ expressions of who they are. We aim to create a discussion challenging the way people think and talk about the Polish gay lifestyle, ultimately increasing awareness of hate speech towards LGBT people.

We then decided to start a Facebook fan page, check it out! Gay In Poland? Here we post relevant articles, graphics, videos, and statistics about hate speech against LGBT people and how to combat it. These are some of our graphics:

After four days up and running, our Facebook Fan page has gotten over 100 Likes and has had more than 5,000 reaches! This is just the beginning…

In addition, we developed three short video clips designed to visualize our social campaign’s mission statement. We worked to show the multi-faceted experiences of gays in Poland and raise awareness of the challenges and intolerance sexual minorities face in Poland. Check out our videos! Below are the links:

Parade:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XqqnTFy-dTeFJkUll6N0xPUFE/view?usp=sharing

Drag Queen:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XqqnTFy-dTc0FMc0Zic1hlWjQ/view?usp=sharing

STD:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XqqnTFy-dTV013RWVrYnhBRFU/view?usp=sharing

So what is a more detailed answer to our question – how to create a social campaign? The answer is: We don't know:) However, important characteristics in developing a campaign may include and are not limited to: commitment, perseverance, and resiliency, mixed with a bit of hope and much more.

We would like to thank the Humanity in Action Polska 2015 team for their hard work and effort in organizing this summer for us. We have a new set of experiences, knowledge, and network. Thank you for what you do.